


But I'm There Again, Everyday

by DVwrites



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-07
Updated: 2013-11-07
Packaged: 2017-12-31 18:42:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1035103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DVwrites/pseuds/DVwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of thoughts and their correlating incidents, built around the words and actions of a very important man. We need darkness to appreciate the light; we need sadness to appreciate alcohol.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But I'm There Again, Everyday

 

“ _Be something other than useless_ ,”

Tuesday. It was a meeting. _Was_ it a meeting? He can’t remember – he vaguely recalls stumbling through his apartment door and leaving it open. He remembers protesting to Jehan in the morning that no-one would have robbed them with his passed out self sprawled, with the ever familiar drunken grace of a man who’d long since lost a shoe and let everything spiral from there, over the couch.

Jehan asks, “What word was it this time?”

“Useless,” He grunts back after a pause that went on too long, arm shielding his eyes from their living room lampshade as it hissed and sizzled through his retinas.

He ached. But, in all honesty, he’d ached the moment Enjolras had opened his mouth.

 

“ _Don’t bother turning up_ ,”

Thursday.

It’s a Thursday because Grantaire drags up the memory that he’d said something – he’d joked, bitterly, and maybe he should stop doing that so much – and began their dance again; the one where Enjolras’ ever-present passion was turned on him – _against_ him – and he snapped back. He snapped back until they reached that point where the shouting stopped and all that was left was an electric band of silence, and it was always Enjolras that had the last word, because R’s anger had tapered out minutes ago and all that was left was this burning ache that felt reminiscent of his chest trying to cave in upon itself.

And he grabs his coat and leaves, again. He stumbles through the front door of his apartment, and this time, Jehan puts a blanket on him in the morning.

 

“ _Some of us contribute_ ,”

It’s Saturday – may God smite the force that rose Enjolras up on a Saturday to force feed them this bullshit.

It was far too early for Grantaire to properly tune into the echo of Robespierre that tumbled from Enjolras’ lips at 1pm, albeit never too early for that whiskey-burn sensation and always late enough for those side-ways glares and almost disappointed looks that the blonde was so good at giving.

Two hours later, and he quips about something – he can’t remember what, he can never remember what – but it sets alight that fire in the other’s eyes and though it isn’t enough to provoke an actual argument this time, it’s enough to warrant a biting rebuttal as he continues on.

That’s fine, he thinks. He’s just here to listen to him, to watch him talk because that passion he had did strange things to Grantaire’s stomach, still. Just as it drove sharp yet entirely metaphorical objects through his chest.

He tunes the rest of the meeting out to wonder if things were easier, if they hurt less, when he’d denied having loved him at all. When it was just admiration. Or when it was just obsession. When it wasn’t ‘love’.

He tunes it out until Joly starts to check his pulse, and he has to wave the pre-med student away.

_“I’m entirely pre-occupied, and love is a waste of time.”_

Another Thursday. No meeting. Everyone is studying; it’s mid-terms.

It’s Thursday afternoon and he’s cradling a hang-over, because he only got up ten minutes ago.

His fingers are curled around his mobile phone, and there are 14 missed calls, and they’re from him.

He goes to call him back, but he remembers last night, and he tosses his phone onto his pillow as he stands, and then he lets the nausea hit him with the full force of every time he felt bile rise up at the back of his throat but managed to keep it down. And he thinks back, but it only makes him sicker.

Once, he asked to the open air: “Do you love me?” and silence was what greeted him, and he laughed, bitterly, drunkenly, because he was alone and so far from sober and because he imagined that that silence would actually be what greeted him if he ever asked properly.

 

It’s Tuesday. And then there’s this silence.

But it’s not quite silence, because within it, Enjolras breathes against his ear and grunts and moans but it’s all so hushed and so quiet that Grantaire almost feels ashamed for his own noise. There’s a meaning aside the mutual understanding somewhere within the lines of this almost poetic fucking that’s happening but he’s too overcome by the hum of pleasure, the anger and the bittersweet feeling of it all that he can’t figure it out.

It’s not slow; it’s not caring. It’s never like Grantaire imagines it. It never occurs because of a sweet word, because of a tender kiss. It occurs because they argue, and when they’re alone, this is where it leads.

Where their hands link, there’s no connection – Grantaire digs his fingernails in and Enjolras’ knuckles whiten and with each buck of the blonde’s hips, he feels himself spiralling closer to the end and a part of him wants this – whatever this is – to hold out for as long as possible.

Then Enjolras wraps his fingers around his length and he’s gone, and melts into his hands.

 

It’s Wednesday.

He remembers this because he’s sober, and because Wednesday comes after Tuesday, and Wednesday morning is the morning where everyone questions the stiffness of their leader’s back, and how relaxed he looks. They comment on how he smiles more. They comment on how it’s great that he and Grantaire have made up, which they could always tell by the less-thick silence between them. They tease, and ask what he did the night before.

And Enjolras says, “Nothing.”

 

It’s Sunday, again, and Grantaire is torn between anger and resignation.

And beneath it all, he’s so utterly in love that it makes him sick. That he’s drunk to swallow it all back, and this makes him a fool that’s brave enough to drunkenly fuck ‘Apollo’ senseless, lacking their usual anger, and in the aftermath, when they’re lying side by side in the quiet, he gets braver still.

He traces a finger over the lines of Enjolras’ back that make up his muscles. He can feel his chest aching all over again.

“Do you love me?” He asks to the air, and it’s the first time he asks.

And, as expected, the silence was what greeted him.

That was the moment that Grantaire realised that no, their leader didn’t love him. Not like he loved his idea of freedom, of liberation, that seemed to haunt Enjolras’ every waking moment, spewing passion and ideas and being so fucking poetic it was almost unbelievable, much alike Enjolras did to him. No, to Enjolras, Grantaire was nothing more than a second-rate ideal.

And to Grantaire, this was as close as it’d ever get to being mutual.

So he drinks, and he stumbles in again, and Jehan puts the blanket on him in the mornings.


End file.
